


Saving Zim

by Dib07



Series: Saving Zim [1]
Category: Invader Zim
Genre: All that PAK headcanon stuff, Broken left antenna, Dib/Oc - Freeform, Drug Use, Elderly Zim, Found Family, Gen, Heartache, If Invader Zim was serious and dark, ZADF, Zim - soldier study, Zim and GIR father and son relationship, Zim goes to dinner and orders dessert as his main course, adult dib, also coffee is a thing, gotta love them evil Tallest, jokes in a box, lots and lots of angst, some stuff happens, some wire is involved
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2021-04-04
Packaged: 2021-04-22 01:33:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22134001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dib07/pseuds/Dib07
Summary: When you had it all. When old age forces you to change. When life isn't what you'd imagined. When you aren't prepared to be so powerless, and a soldier's undetermined future remains his greatest fear.
Series: Saving Zim [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1596022
Comments: 44
Kudos: 72





	1. The Call

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there all! You may recognise me! I usually publish all my works on Fanfiction.net and I thought I'd give Archive of Our Own a try. And hey, what a perfect excuse to reupload Saving Zim but with sometimes newer and polished chapters? Anyway, I hope you enjoy this story, whether you are new to Saving Zim, or you are a fan who is familiar with the story! Reviews, comments, they are all welcome! And thank you for stopping by!

Chapter One: The Call

_'Save me from my superstitions_  
_Now I'm free from this soul's condition_  
_Wait just a while_  
_And I'll greet you with a smile_  
_Hold me 'cause I'm sure I'm hated_  
_Promises they are overrated_  
_Wait just a while_  
_While I'm drowning in denial'_

_Save Me - Muse_

Dib stood at the balcony, filling his time with his habitual reveries. In the dark and cold, he looked up to quietly admire the constellations, a cigarette steaming with smoke from the bony tips of his index and middle finger of his left hand. The stars never failed to fascinate him, or help him feel woefully insignificant as they glowed with a strange and frosty shine. To Zim, the stars did not endow him with the same sense of mystical awe. To him, they were as mundane as traffic was to Dib, but that never sullied the allure of the cosmos. Whenever he could, and if it was a clear cloudless night with the moon being particularly bright, he’d go and stand on his balcony, smoking a cigarette or drinking a can of beer in the security of his own solitude. Zim had smugly pointed out that human light pollution blotted out the full orchestra of the planets and stars, rendering them nigh invisible. And Dib knew it to be true. Not only had he been a brief passenger in the Voot, he had also seen the stars in their crystal-cut millions when he had taken a fateful voyage into the malefic dark of space in Tak’s spaceship. His eyes had ached from looking at so many celestial balls of light, but there had been nothing enchanting so far above the skies of home, where the odious reach of death had been ever closer.

  
Now he was quite happy to admire them safely from his home as his glass lenses reflected the light from the nearby streetlamps.

  
His home was situated on a quiet rural town where not much happened. The traffic was light, and his neighbours couldn’t even be seen over the brow of the hill. On one side of him was a large forest and opposite him was a cornfield. He liked it here, and he liked the serenity the place possessed. No more city life for him. Of course, the main town was only five miles away, and he went there regularly for business and pleasure. Zim’s culdersack was exactly three miles behind him, so in a way they were now living closer.  
In the parlour the TV was comfortably playing away, its blue light enveloping the empty sofa in front of it. The room was in a bit of a mess. Countless UFO magazines were haphazardly strewn all over the coffee table – a table littered with old liquid stains. Popcorn kernels had been distributed over the rug, and his book shelves were dusty and cluttered with memorabilia, with the occasional cobweb making its debut in the parlour room corners.

  
Living as a fulltime bachelor had made him indolent and lazy with his own housekeeping. Yes, he was astute and proper when it came to his job. He carried professionalism around with him as if he had coined the term, but when it came to private living, he stopped caring as soon as he entered the threshold to his own domain. Perhaps it was a man thing. Perhaps it was a symptom of loneliness. Either way, he didn’t have a measure of care.

  
As he was inching a fresh cigarette from its packaging, the TV screen suddenly flickered violently, and the voices became a distorted mess of noise. Dib spun round; sure it was on the fritz, but how could it be? He’d bought the wide-screen TV less than a year ago and it wasn’t even past its warranty!

  
As he was bemusing this, the lights flickered in chorus and then died, filling the house with an ill blackness. The TV keeled into a deadening silence as well, leaving Dib in the lonely dark. Hastily he rummaged for the lighter he usually kept in his left jacket pocket. With nervous fingers he found it and pulled it out. He flipped open the lid and the small orange flame bloomed upwards like a flower. It doused his pale face in a lambent glow.

  
His eyes tried to scan the dark for foul play. The house seemed to glare silently back at him, as hushed and as sullen as a tomb.

  
It was not unusual for rural areas to suffer blackouts. But Dib always had reservations when suspicious things started happening to him.

  
The flicking lighter flame could not reach very far. He trod on ahead carefully in his little light bubble, shuffling step by step, trying to remember where the furniture was situated so that he wouldn’t stumble and fall into everything.

  
His hand found the wall as he hunted for the light switch he knew was there. Encountering the nodule was a welcome and he hit it. Nothing happened. He flicked it back up. Still nothing.

  
Was there an intruder? Or a simple fault in his electricity? The fuse box was down in his basement. He never liked going down there. It was the last place left to renovate, and it would be the most expensive. It was damp, and unnecessarily large for what it was. He only ever stored alcohol down there, and useless cardboard boxes that he used for storing away old CDs, countless VHS tapes and other redundant junk from when he was a kid.

  
It’s just a simple blackout. He told himself, yet how many times had he blamed the suspicious on ordinary circumstances when the only real first culprit was always THAT alien.  
“Zim?” He called impatiently, his voice strangely loud in the unpleasant dark and quiet. “Zim, are you in here? If you are, this is NOT funny!”

  
He tried to get angry. Truth was, he was shivering in his pants and it was hard to convey one’s voice when he was pretty shook up. He hated being blinded, and hated feeling vulnerable, especially in his own house. Zim didn’t usually strike this close to home, but he did know where Dib lived, and not everything the alien did was coherent or plausible in any way.

  
“Zim!” He yelled it this time, growing more impatient and frightened. “Come out this second or I’m calling the cops!”

  
As if by magic the lights blared back to life, filling Dib’s vision with white. He had to throw a hand up in front of his face to allay the torturously bright intensity that flared into his eyes. As if it was part of the conspiracy the TV sprung back to life too, and a female reporter was back on Channel 5, highlighting the recent rise in food prices. All was well again, just as before, as if nothing foreboding had transpired.

  
Dib peered around the parlour nervously, the lighter still flickering away: creating twin embers in the centre of his glasses. Awkwardly, Dib jabbed a cigarette between his lips and lit the tip before putting the lighter away. “Zim?” He called again, this time with far less anger. “Zim? You there?”  
There was not a sound.

  
He inhaled on his cigarette, and the intoxicating fumes helped his nerves relax. Outside, he could distinctly hear car alarms going off, and not just one or two either, but at least half a dozen.

  
He strayed towards the kitchen, thinking about grabbing a knife from the utensil drawer when the rooms still possessed an unwelcoming solemnity.

  
Like an intruder in his own home, he floated from place to place, tense and ready for a fight. Each time he came to a room and swung the door wide, ready to take a swing, he’d confront an empty room. All the windows were shut, and the back and front doors were still locked, the outside porch lights revealing that very same solemn quiet. Of course, windows and doors had never posed much of a problem for a little alien invader, but he was still glad to see them intact.

  
He was about to decide that the whole thing had been nothing but a simple, innocent blackout, when the phone began to ring in the parlour, causing him to freak out.  
He felt like an idiot, jumping at shadows. What had he become?

  
Dib checked his wristwatch. It was late. No one he knew would ring at this time. Sometimes his dad would ring him on occasion when it was very late at night when he couldn’t hold in his excitement any longer over some new invention or other.

  
_It’s probably sales people ringing up, and wanting my details for something I don’t need._

  
He ignored the first few rings, relying on the answering machine to follow through and have the recipient leave a recorded message. But the recipient left no message. And in the space of ten seconds it started ringing again. Dib hardly ignored someone who was trying to get through to him twice. So, with a hard sigh, he walked on over with the limp cigarette dangling from his lips and picked it up. “Yeah? Hello? Membrane residence.”

  
“Urm... yes, hello?” The voice sounded tinny, and very familiar. “Urm.... is this Dib?” The caller sounded like he was struggling with his words.

  
Dib frowned. Was this a prank caller? “Yes. It is he. Who is this?”

  
“It’s Gir!”

  
“Gir? Zim’s robot dog thingy?” Now Dib was surprised. It was rare, doubly rare for Gir to have anything to do with him, let alone coherently make a phone call to his house. He still had his doubts, and suspected a trap.

  
“Urm... you need to come over. My Master spilled his sauce everywhere. I’m worried. Someone could slip on it.”

  
“Sauce? Jesus Gir! Is that all?” Sauce? This was ridiculous! Why would he care? “Just clean it up!”

  
“I... I CAN’T!” Now Gir was beginning to sound frustrated, if robots could even get frustrated. “It keeps coming out!”

  
“What does?”

  
“The sauce!”

  
“Look, is Zim there? Can I talk to him?” What Gir had to say was usually drivel anyway. Talking to him was like trying to reason with a mad man. It just gave Dib a headache.

  
“Yes...” Then: “No...”

  
“Gir, just clean it up. I have better things to do.”

  
“No! Wait!”

  
And Dib hung up. Jesus! Talk about wasting his time!

  
He walked back out through his open door to the balcony, enjoying his cigarette until it had turned into an ashy stub. Then he flicked it over the balcony, watching its last ember disappear into the dark below.

  
Sauce.  
What a load of baloney.

  
But Gir’s tone did worry him. It had a hue of panic to it.

  
_I can’t keep going over there EVERY time Gir rings me up about something stupid._

  
His mind toyed with the idea of going over, just to see if one of Zim’s plans had combusted, perhaps showering sauce or ignition fuel all over the place. It would come as no surprise. Zim rushed through his plans as if his biological clock was on the brink, and his final products would end up as mighty big failures.

  
_The trip would take me just fifteen minutes. Less if I take the shortcut._  
_Can I be bothered though?_

  
He looked to the phone in the parlour. Soft unease had started in his heart. Then, before he knew it, his body was in motion and he was grabbing his coat and his car keys.

~ A little earlier ~

“Stupid, stupid machinery!” He was down on his PAK, which he hated. And though his place was kept as sterile as possible from unhealthy obsession, the floor still proved to be less savoury than any other surface, and he had to lie on it. Earth presented a lot of dust, and though his base was well ventilated and sealed tight against the airborne spores of humanity and all they produced, dust still made its way down into the catacombs of his nest.

  
Using his receptor grapplers, he sought the problem in the dark beneath his console and set about to fixing it. The wires were sheathed in rubbery ploxum, an Irken material much like rubber, yet thicker, more resilient, and stronger. He slit some of it away to get at the delicate coils within. One of the wires wasn’t connecting properly. Must have been a fault when the machinery was installed, or some recent power surge had caused something to rupture.

  
He squinted a fuchsia eye at the problem even though he had no trouble seeing in the dark or in the cavernous confines below his console.

  
The faulty wire in question was easy to pinpoint. The silvery trim was blackened and slightly out of shape amongst the others. Zim cut away the damaged section with careful precision and let the piece fall onto his uniform before he carefully slipped in a new piece of wire after cutting it to fit. Then he carefully backed up, sliding along the floor on his PAK. It was a bad habit to practise, one that would surely cause Irken elites to frown upon.

  
He coasted back into the light and rolled over onto his side. Folding up his knees from under him, he tried to stand. His knees ached, and his back hurt from straining so long under the console in an awkward position.

  
Grabbing the edge of the console for support, he levered himself back up, feeling the pressure ease from his joints.

  
“Computer!” He barked, “Re-establish connection and run the drives!” He was pretty sure the bodge-job had fixed the problem. He wasn’t a qualified Irken engineer, but he was able to make and fix whatever he could, sometimes out of very limited resources. It was not wise to rely entirely on machines, machines that could break down and leave him in the dark.

  
Invaders had to be resourceful after all, especially when they lived a solitary existence.

  
“Re-establishing link.” Droned the computer.

  
Zim stood, staring at the screen as Irken jargon rolled upwards in streams. His antennae, one crooked with its tip shredded, the other perfectly smooth, lay across the flat of his head as he tried to relax. But his body remained stiff and rigid, a posture he had held almost all of his life without even making a conscious effort to realize he was doing it.  
Gir, his deranged S.I.R robot unit, plodded into the room holding an armful of supermarket products. “I got the shampoo! Let’s turn the taps on!”

  
Zim, who had become a reluctant expert at understanding Gir’s mangled speeches, answered with bitter promptness: “Does it look like I need a bath, Gir? Now just go and watch TV or something. I have work to do!” He could have rebuked him in Irken. He hadn’t spoken in his native tongue for over twelve years, and it bothered him. He did not want his own language to go rusty and forgotten. Already in his head he thought in English, and though he hated this unplanned arrangement, he couldn’t help himself. Without hearing another fellow Irken speak, he was slowly losing touch with his own kind.

_How did it come to this?_

  
He jerked himself away from this dangerous reverie. Irkens did not reflect or daydream! It was a waste of time! “Computer! Download a diagnostic report!”  
Suddenly everything went down. The computer hummed in a low drone as all power drained from its processors, and the screen reeled into a very alarming black. As Zim pondered this, panic freshly knocking on his door, the lights went out.

  
Everything went out.

  
Even his PAK.

  
The power outage fazed Zim only a little, the lack of lights even less, for he could see and feel his way in the dark perfectly. But it was the failure in his PAK that frightened him the most. Usually brimming with pulsing pink light, the metal dome on his back dimmed and then faded to grey. This made his heart falter.

  
“Gir! Help me! The power is out! I need the facility back online!” He could not have caused such a massive blackout, surely? His repairs had been minor! He had been nowhere near the main power circuits! “Gir!” He cried when his first shout was not reciprocated.

  
He could see Gir in the dark, not much farther from where he had originally been standing before the power failure. But as he turned to Zim, his attention decidedly elsewhere, the Irken elite saw that Gir’s eyes were red. They gave a strange intimidating glow when all else was dark.

  
“Gir! Stop staring and help your master! I need you to go back to the power core and see if it’s still online! We have ten minutes!” Ever the hard worker, he was already on the next task. Mentally employing the mechanism that held his PAK in place inside his spinal column, he lodged it free so that it could disengage from his body. This telekinesis was rare for Irkens, and some possessed higher abilities than others. Zim’s telekinesis was weak at best, but it was just strong enough to manually manipulate his PAK to and from his body whereas some Irkens like Tak had a far higher mental capacity for psychic and telekinetic management.

  
Before the PAK could drop to the floor he grabbed it with both hands and brought it over to his console to begin diagnostics. Luckily the laser gun had been charged this morning, or he may not have been able to use it at all.

  
But Gir had other things on his mind. He approached Zim almost casually, as if he was about to impart a line of dialogue. Zim was not paying any attention. In his left claw was the laser gun. He was busy lifting off the top lid of the PAK to get at its circuitry, and saw him only out of the corner of his periphery. “Yes, Gir? I gave you an order. Now get going!”

  
He wished he had paid better attention.

  
Gir flexed his metal fingers together to form a blade and then thrust it deeply into Zim’s side as quick as a bullet. The bladed fingers penetrated muscle and flesh with ease, and before Zim even realized it, Gir had yanked his hand back out again, allowing blood to drench the floor beneath. More blood spurted down Zim’s uniform and all over his polished boots. The Irken just stood there, too horrified and dumbfounded to cry out. The lights abruptly flickered back on, the main console came online, and the computer system hummed into life. Even his PAK lit up.

  
Gir’s bright red eyes turned back to their charming cyan glow. “Master? Master? What you do? You got icky sauce all over yous!”

  
Zim swallowed, and felt his breath run back down his throat where his little lungs started hitching out wheezes. He staggered backward, and pressed a gloved claw to his side. Hot, iridescent fluid glugged out with each beat of his heart.

  
Before pain and numbing shock could outrace him, he quickly turned round and mentally clawed for his PAK beneath the clamour of his own panic. He was rewarded by its comforting presence as it lifted upward, its flat inner disk facing his spine. Tubes extended from its base like twin roots and once again these interconnected with the tubes from his spine that protruded outwards to greet it. Once whole again, the PAK sunk deep into his nervous system and started sending out electric signals to his body to begin biological repair. Even so, Zim, cold and hazy with blood loss, squatted where he was, both hands pressed to his wound as blood oozed out between his claws.

  
Gir stood by him, voice shrill with concern. “Master! Did you hurt yourself? Should I get help? I know you like pancakes. That’ll make you feel better!”

  
Zim couldn’t believe it. He was so pain-induced, and so compressed with shock, that he had hardly given Gir much thought. The S.I.R unit’s act of untoward aggression had to be a mistake! A miscalculation! Gir had never done anything of the like before, except for that one day when Zim tried to keep him permanently locked to Duty Mode. But that was many, many years ago.

  
“Gir.” His words were slurred, his brain in a haze of absolute pain. His PAK was busy filling his chemistry with pain blockers, and it was making him tired and disorientated. To a human, they would be feeling pretty drunk at this point. “Do you recall the last few minutes? Activate your memory banks.”

  
Gir thought for a moment. This idle posturing was more suited to something with sentient qualities than robotic.

  
Zim watched, still squatting on the floor. It was much too painful to sit, and much too painful to flatten himself to the ground. He wasn’t sure how deep Gir had managed to go in. Was his spooch in jeopardy? Or was it just a flesh wound? His PAK was burning with activity as it hastened to still the blood loss, arrest the pain, and secure the site from infection. But it would take longer for the actual wound to close. First it had to coagulate, and that could take a few minutes.

  
“Nope. Sorry. Nothing there.” The robot concluded at last.

  
Zim took a moment to breathe out. It felt like he had a thousand stingy bees loose inside him. Warm viscous blood slathered his fingers. He was pretty sure he was about to lose consciousness. The world was starting to fade in and out, much like one of the human movies he had watched on occasion. Even Gir, once crystal clear, was now turning into a blurry outline.

  
“Could... c-could you just... m-maybe...” He felt his heart stagger and lurch as if the very blood it was trying to pump had become too difficult. The base around him was now transforming into a dark swathe of grey. Was it another blackout? Or was it he who was blacking out?

  
“Master?” Gir whinnied like a puppy. “Master? Master, open your eyes! Don’t be sad! I’m... I’m sorry!”

  
It was the last thing he heard. In order to save energy to protect its host, the PAK sent him to sleep.


	2. Human Intervention

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all! It's me again! I thought I'd go ahead and post the second chapter that's recently been brushed up and polished. I'm still going through it with a fine-toothed comb so I may come back and adjust things here and there, but overall it's about done! Thanks so much for revisiting chapter one, and leaving kudos and comments! I really appreciate it! Piratemonkies64 has been showing me the ropes, and I'm slowly finding my way around this site! Anyway, here you go and I hope you enjoy!

_'This dream isn't feeling sweet_   
_We're reeling through the midnight streets_   
_And I've never felt more alone_   
_It feels so scary, getting old'_

_Ribs - Lorde_

  
_“That’ll teach you, you stupid little child! NEVER mock an Irken soldier!”_

  
Dib’s head whirled with fragments of the past that came and went like an autumn wind throwing its leaves of memory around. He and Zim weren’t exactly enemies anymore, and though Dib wanted to construct some sort of friendship (that felt more like he was trying to build a rickety shack on a cliff face) he wasn’t sure if Zim would ever just relax enough to allow any true amity. Their history had been too violent to push aside, but something equally as terrible had put a stop to them meeting bloodier ends. There was another thing: as loud as an exclamation mark. He knew, but he wasn’t quite sure if Zim knew. He was pretty sure the Irken did know, and neither of them wanted to look at that ugly truth just yet.

  
Hunching his shoulders against the cold winter wind that was peppered with snow, Dib hurried up Zim’s front yard that was littered with the usual gnomes and misshapen birds. He rolled up his trench coat sleeve to see the scar that he had received that day at the gym when he was fifteen. Zim had always been dangerous, and it was wise to never forget that. 

_“Okay class. Time for some Physical Education.”_

  
_There was a groan from most of the children combined. No one was particularly enthused with P.E. If it wasn’t cold outside, it was freezing, even within the smelly gymnasium hall that had hanging cobwebs and always stank of old sweat and musty clothes._

  
_The teacher, Mr. Hedge, was giving them all exercise tips before they went out onto the playing field. They were lined up against the wall in their skimpy P.E shorts and shirts. From the look on Zim’s face, Dib could tell that he detested the routine as well as he did, especially when he had to dress down to reveal more of himself than he liked. And his short stature was extra evident when he had to line up with all the other much taller children. The kids purposely bumped into him, calling him names like ‘Frankenstein,’ and ‘gremlin,’ while making faces at him. Dib often watched as the teasing went on, wondering if Zim would reach his limit and explode outward with his PAK foray: exposing himself in the process. But he never did. He took the bullying rather well; in fact sometimes it only fed his anger and hatred, which was not exactly good when he could later lay it all on Dib._

  
_ After running around a miserable playing field for an hour, the class returned to the changing rooms to shower and get back into their old clothes. He waited for Zim to come to the decision of removing his shirt, and when he did, Dib bounced into the fray, snatched the shirt off him, and went running down the hall, screaming: “Zim’s an alien! Look at how green he is!”_

  
_Half naked and enraged, Zim took off after him. “Stink beast! Release that shirt or I’ll cut you into a thousand tiny, TINY pieces!”_

  
_Dib yelled from over his shoulder. “What’s the matter, Zim? Too slow without your mechanical struts? Or are you just plain lazy? I know, I know! It’s because you’re SHORT! Isn’t that right?”_

  
_The flight was as fun as his actual battles, if not better. The adrenaline soaked into him like he had just injected himself with ecstasy and he felt so alive! It was these moments that he remembered the most, rather than the aftermaths, except for this day._

  
_Eventually, as he knew he would, Dib ran out of places to run to. Zim seemed to never run out of steam. The boy ended up outside again, behind an old building the adults were using to teach Religious Studies. Dib, caught in a dead-end, was sweaty and panting, the P.E lesson having worn him out. But not Zim. He came round the corner slowly like some psychopathic killer in the movies with not a bead of sweat on him. His chest wasn’t even moving strenuously. How could someone be so... physically fit? And he was so small! Dib had longer legs, and had a longer stride from his recent growth spurt. _

  
_Had Zim cheated somehow?_

  
_In his hands he held onto the alien’s slightly grass-stained shirt._

  
_In the face of anxiety, he levelled his gaze and confronted his demon, hoping that his challenge wouldn’t go unheard, and that the other children would come running. After all, what threat could the alien employ? Zim was in human territory. He was miles from any of his tech._

  
_The Irken stood, shoulders tightening, eyes levelling back at him in a low, glowering way that made him think of lions or wolves readying to pounce. _

  
_“What’s wrong, space monster? Worried everyone will see how disgustingly green you are all over?”_

  
_Had he not read Zim correctly? Had he overstepped some secret, invisible line? Instead of slipping into the usual charade of insult-trading, Zim flashed out a PAK leg, something he rarely did in case of being seen by other humans. Its mordant point, sharper than a needle, sunk into Dib’s right arm without prelude. The pain started as something small, as if the shock had dampened the feel of it somehow, but then the agony made him scream and drop the shirt. Zim yanked out the javelin-point with that same empty stare, causing Dib’s arm to run red._

_“That’ll teach you, you stupid little child! NEVER mock an Irken soldier!”_

  
_Dib just stared at the increasing outspread of red sweeping down his arm until it was dripping off his fingers and elbow like water. His clothes were doing little to soak it up._

  
_The soldier’s eyes suddenly softened, as if he was seeing him as a child for the first time. “Dib...stink?”_

Dib pulled the sleeve back over his arm, covering up the star-shaped scar as he stood at the little purple door. Even though he had doubled over from the pain, thinking he was going to die, he had found it mildly amusing to see shame fill Zim’s face. And though the alien uttered not a word as he backed away, the apology was in his eyes.

  
Dib was then rushed to the nurse, and then rushed to the hospital. Most of it was a blur. Twenty stitches he had, and as he lay in a hospital bed with his father shaking his head, he didn’t say a word about Zim and how he got the life-threatening injury. He could have got him in some pretty serious shit, and it might even have led to his exposure. But he made up some lame excuse that he’d fallen on a piece of glass.

  
Why had he done it?

  
He wasn’t sure at the time. Perhaps he hadn’t wanted the battles to end so abruptly. He had had the power, the power he’d been wanting since he was eleven to end the alien’s dark reign, and that had made him feel good. Maybe it was because it wasn’t a very fitting end to their charades? Or maybe it was because he wanted to employ his own personal revenge? But perhaps it was really because he had seen that look of guilt: that unsaid apology in Zim’s eyes. A part of him had wished he had never seen it. 

  
The scar was a reminder of what he could have done, and what he chose not to do. Zim had sustained a scar that conveyed the same weight, and a similar painful significance. Every time he looked at him it was there to see in all its shredded worth. 

  
_ I didn’t think he could change. I saw him only as a monster that should rot away in some lab. I had to become the monster to finally see Zim as someone who has dreams, fears. And pain._

  
Despite the ceasefire between them – a ceasefire that felt close to breaking sometimes, it was still peculiar in the way that Zim stiffened whenever Dib drew too close, especially when certain proximities took place within the range of his PAK. Zim never allowed him to get close to it, even when Dib never showed any hostility. But sometimes all it took was a sudden hand gesture during amiable conversation from the human to cause the Irken to flinch and tense up, his soldierly instincts reactivating in a heartbeat. 

  
Never truly finding comfort in the presence of the other, he doubly loathed coming to the old bug’s home where personal safety was never a guarantee either. They had a communal meeting ground that was neutral – and it perfectly suited their individual securities and pride. Going to your enemy’s home turf was never an easy endeavour; it started a psychological battle in one’s mind before the real one began.

  
In spite of his age, Zim still somehow managed to make him feel like a little boy sometimes. 

  
Gathering what courage he could, he lifted a hand, tightened it into a fist and knocked three times on the alien’s door, hoping against hope that no one would answer.

* * *

He drifted. And drifted.

  
He was back under the console, straining to modulate the wires while the base crashed and burned around him. Someone was calling his name, but he could not answer. He had to do this! He had to fix it! It was his mistake - his blunder that had to be amended, lest it do anymore damage. But the call became harder to ignore. The words could be heard over the hissing and roaring of the flames, but he would not divide his attention from his work. He would fail if he did.

  
The ticking held sway over him. It could not be ignored, or turned aside, and what he was working on became a jumbled nonsensical mess. His overtired and analytical mind could not pull a single thread of logic from it.

  
Sweat ran like oil down the crease between his eyes.

  
Mastery was everything. Control was everything! His base was his sanctum – his kingdom. Losing it was not an option!

  
Something or someone rudely pulled him out from under the console, and he was confronted by starlight. Rushing far above him in the mordant black were the exorbitantly coloured and decorated Irken warships as they continued onwards to destinations unknown – without him. They flashed by without stopping, as if they no longer remembered or cared that he was still trapped at his station on Earth. He wanted to shout out at them, hail them: remind them that he was still here! Doing his duty! To not forget him!

  
He raised a hand to the dark and passing ships, about to cry out for help – when his jaws clamped shout over the noise he had nearly made.

  
“Master!”

  
He spun round to reprimand the wayward child who had distracted him from his toil when he saw tears in the robot’s bluish green eyes. “Gir? What is it?” He spread his claws over the robot’s face to stroke those tears away, but then recoiled in the same moment. Soldiers did not mollycoddle their assets or their tools!

  
The fire was spreading. The ceiling began to fall away, segments of it landing heavily around them. Oil sloshed around his boots. He was about to shout a warning when the base ignited, reddish flames taking root upon his only place in the world.

  
He let up a hoarse cry and the terrible dream weakened its steel grip. Eyelids he didn’t realize he had been holding tightly closed started to open. After a few false starts his eyelids fluttered open a little wider, and he noticed a strange diaphanous light that seemed both cold and alien. Something large and fuzzy stood in this blurry world. “Zim? Zim! Oh thank god! It’s me!”

  
Zim’s brain, stupid and heavy with sleep, tried to process his new situation. He went to open his eyes wider and the world gradually focused a little more. The blurred figure was none other than Dib, and this deeply alarmed him. Why was he so drowsy when the enemy was right above him? Had his worst fears come at last? 

  
But... but how had he been plucked from his defences? 

  
He was a goner.

  
Panic hammered at his internal walls and his tiny, slit nostrils flared as he detected new smells; smells infused with the heavy pungency of man. His broken and smooth antennae twitched at the detectable tick-tock of a nearby clock, and at the vibrations of the February winds outside that were accompanied by a flurry of cars as they rushed by in the snow.

  
He’d feel the sudden pull of restraints – and know the taste of capture. There was no use trying to stay calm as his chest began to hastily cycle up and down to a fevered tempo. The scalpels would not be long arriving. Soon he’d hear drills, and smell and feel the chemical stench of hydroxide and antiseptic chlorides. 

  
“Easy, Zim. It’s okay. You’re safe.” 

  
These words had little meaning to him. Why was Dib even saying these words? Was it to stop him from screaming?

  
Where was Gir? Why could he not hear the pulse of his computers?

  
The Irken soldier struggled to sit up. His brain was still woefully sluggish and overspent somehow as if he had been shot to the eyeballs with anaesthetic concoctions similar to his homemade rinauh drugs. “D-D-Diib... w-wherz...” The voice that came out of his throat was not his own. It was croaky and frail. When one arm tried to lift up his uncooperative upper torso, his elbow slipped and he went down again. But the short landing was a soft one. His soporific senses told him that he was resting on feather-soft pillows.

  
“Take it easy. You’re still out of it. You must have had one hell of an accident.”

  
_Accident?_

  
The word did not correlate with him. He hadn’t had an accident in months. Besides, such mishaps were usually well-contained, and his computer mopped them up with perfunctory ease. Dib liked to think that he, an Irken elite, was accident-prone. But he begged to differ.

  
The world and its details sharpened by the second. Dib’s profile grew clearer before his eyes until he could see the outline of his glasses on his prim little nose, and his dark swathe of ebony hair. He wasn’t holding a drill or a scalpel in either hand. He then looked down and saw blankets cupping his body. He was slow to recognise the room, but when he did, his swelling of fear found its ceiling. He was at Dib’s place. He wasn’t in a lab. He was lying on a couch, not a surgical table, and his wrists were not tied down to anything.

  
As he fought to gain more familiarity with his current and scary predicament, he noticed that the pillows supported his PAK considerably, allowing him to rest easy on his back, a position he did not really like.

  
“You’re at my place. I took you here.” The Dib looked stupidly concerned. It made the blemishes under his eyes look larger from behind his glasses, and he was speaking softly, like one would speak to a wild and frightened animal.

  
With some strength returning, his haze of sleep pushed to the edges, Zim sat up with a jerk, his heart leaping against his little ribs. When Dib approached too closely, hands open to try and soothe him; Zim responded by curling back his lips to reveal as many teeth as possible, his words hissing out of his throat. “Stay b-back! Stay! Don’t comm n-n-ner me!”

  
“I’m not here to hurt you.” Dib spread his fingers on his palms, inciting surrender.

  
Zim started again in pure alarm when he felt a tremendous stab of pain in his side. He jerked down the blankets to reveal his naked torso. And on that torso were layers and layers of gauze that were secured around his belly; a belly that looked rather swollen. On his left side under his ribs was a damp green stain where the blood had seeped through.

  
“Zim! It’s okay! Will you calm down?”

  
“Imm naked!” He cried back, his voice croakier than ever. The ability to shout had been disabled. “Wherz my uniform? Why ‘en’t I at home? In m-my base? Wherz Gir?”

  
“If I tell you, will you calm down? I put my neck out for you, you know!” Dib said, sounding firm but not unkind.

  
Zim’s right antenna hitched forwards in earnest for a second before drawing it back in fear. He hurriedly pulled the blankets up to his chest in an attempt to remain dignified, hissing from soreness and anger. “Then stop staring ‘en tell me!”

  
“Okay.” Dib took a breath and then sighed as he tried to appear and act as least threatening as possible. “Just don’t kill me, or freak out, okay? Unlike you, I don’t lie. Anyways, about two hours ago, Gir called me on the phone.” He noticed Zim stare at him, that snarling grimace of his softening in light of this fact. “Said some nonsense about sauce. I wasn’t interested. Thought it was just another one of his pranks. But I went over, thinking you’d had another accident or something.”

  
“I don hav’ accidents!” Zim claimed angrily in a strained squawk.

  
“Sure, sure. Anyway, I went to your door, and Gir answered. I followed him in, and I found you on the floor, lying in a pool of your own blood.”

  
Zim leaned against the backrest of the couch, his faintly wrinkled eyes staring in that numbed and absent way whenever something did not meet his expectations or go the way he’d planned it. His side screamed at him to lie back down, but he refused; frightened of looking vulnerable, frightened of Dib’s next step. 

  
“F-Floor?” He said, gulping. His mouth and throat were dry as his focus slowly returned.

  
“Yeah. Thought you were dead, in all honesty. You really fucking scared me, Zim.” He paused and looked about him, his eyes not meeting the Irken’s for a long moment. “I wrapped you up in my coat, ran back to my car, sat you on my lap and drove you to my place as fast as I could. Gir’s still at your base, keeping it safe. I also didn’t want him in the way.” Dib then stalled again as if he was letting it sink in, or allowing Zim the time to fill him in on what had happened. His eyes behind those glasses did not look away this time, but all the Irken could do was glaze blankly at his blankets, forcing Dib to forgo caution and ask directly. “So, what happened? What gave you that very specific injury?”

  
He curled his toes at the memory. “M-My uniform?”

  
“In the washing machine, going round and round. It was saturated in blood, Zim! You couldn’t possibly expect to wear it in such a state?”

  
The Elite was trying to piece together the information. Dib didn’t look like he was lying. His face was tired-looking and pasty pale, and Zim soon saw the green stains on various parts of the human’s shirt, even showing up against the black of his pants, and apple coloured bloodstains also coloured his hands as if he hadn’t had time to wash up. It didn’t make a lick of sense as to why Dib would go out of his way to rush him out of his base all the way here. What purpose did this serve for Dib? What did he hope to gain out of this act of... charity?

  
“Why’d you do it?” He asked curtly. “Why’d you help me, pig meat?”

  
The investigator shrugged. “Honestly? No such moral dilemma even occurred to me at that moment. Come on, Zim. We’ve known each other now for some twenty years. Don’t you think that should count for something?”

  
“I think you’re up to something.” He imparted, not afraid to show his suspicions while he kept helplessly looking to the human’s hands to see weapons there: something to prove his certainties: his belief that the human had to have some purpose up his sleeve. He could never have done this out of kindness. 

  
Dib just rolled his eyes at the Irken’s general stubbornness. “If I was up to something I would have done it by now! So what happened? You’re good at avoiding the issue, Zim. I know you better than you realize.”

  
The Irken looked away, jaws clenching tightly. He was done with the conversation. 

  
It was easier to hate. It was better to protect oneself that way than to trust in anyone. “I fell down some stairs.” He blurted without making eye contact. He went to bring his knees up to his chest when a huge tug of pain told him that was a bad idea.

  
“You don’t have any stairs.” Dib said patiently. 

  
“I DO!” He tried to yell it, but his voice came out as a rusty squeak. “I can’t believe you took me from my base!” He snarled, trying to sound angry when his voice kept crumbling into hoarser croaks. “And you touched me! Ripped off my military uniform! I smell like you! It’s disgusting! My base? You could have destroyed it!”

  
Dib smiled sadly for him. “You were so cooperative when you were asleep, Zim. But just to remind you, I’ve sorta just saved your life. You owe me, little green thing.”

  
Zim spat at this. “I don’t need you or your smelly help and I owe you nothing! My PAK takes care of everything anyway! All you’ve done is made me feel stupid!”

  
“Uh huh.” Dib replied just to tease him. Truth was, he was still a little perplexed and haunted by the night’s events. Green blood soiled the front of his shirt, some of it soaking through to his skin. He hadn’t had time to change since taking Zim home. He remembered getting into the car, and tucking Zim onto his lap while he grabbed the steering wheel. He had wrapped the unconscious creature in his coat, but still the blood dribbled onto Dib’s pants and car seat. He had pretty much driven like the devil down those shy three miles to get him home, thinking that even then, he’d arrive too late.

  
Zim gave Dib an annoyed look, and then kicked back the blankets with his good leg and turned to try and shimmy off the couch. Dib patiently drew closer to catch him in case he should fall. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Your wound hasn’t been stitched up, and you’ll only make the bleeding worse! You need to lie down and wait for your body to heal!”

  
“You’d be surprised at our superior healing rate, human! Not that a dirty monkey like you would ever understand! Now out of the way! And bring me my uniform at once!”

  
“I told you, it’s in the wash!”

  
Zim more or less toppled down the couch and landed painfully on his rump upon the carpet. He let out a snarling hiss of pain, his thin tongue darting out between his lips like the tongue of a snake’s.

  
“Do you ever listen?” Dib approached him so sternly that Zim paled under his towering shadow. Then the human hooked his hands under Zim’s armpits and lifted him back onto the couch whereupon he re-covered him with the blankets. With uncommon gentleness, he pushed him back down onto the pillows. By this time the fire in Zim’s side had spread, causing his chest and leg to ache miserably. So this time he barely resisted when he felt Dib’s hands guiding him down to rest.

  
“This is stupid!” The little invader coughed in shrill anger. “I’m lying on a filthy couch! In your filthy house! You’re going to do something to me! I just know it! The fucking FBI are on their way! I swear on the Tallest!”

  
“I’m making you some tea. You can drink tea. I’ve seen you have it before.” He started moving away, and suddenly Zim didn’t want him to go. He could not fathom why he felt like this. Maybe because he’d been closer to death than he had been in a very long while, and in a strange fit of madness he didn’t want to be alone. An invader’s calling was to be comfortable alone, no matter what happened. His military indoctrination had prepared him for all eventualities. But all the training in the known universe had little power over natural instinct.

“D-Dib?”

  
Dib halted in the doorway and turned to him expectantly. His face was carefully blank of expression.

  
Zim baulked against his sudden desires, hating this emotional carousel. “Just... just get my stinken’ uniform you useless ape!”

  
“You’ve upgraded me from monkey to ape? I feel privileged.” And he left the room.

  
Zim sunk back down, the pain causing him to shiver even though he did in fact feel warm. He turned his head slightly so that he could discern the parlour room window. It was very dark outside, and he wasn’t sure how long he had been out for. His right antenna picked up the sounds of the Dib moving about in the kitchen, and every now and then he could hear the clink of porcelain and the thump of cupboard doors closing. While his mind was free to roam, his thoughts turned down dark path, and he remembered the way Gir had looked at him while he had his hand deep in his side. Without his powerful Irken computer, he had no way to be sure how bad the internal damage was, but with this amount of blood still trying to pour out of him, he had a feeling Gir had gone through his spooch. The PAK was whirring away like a washing machine, working hard to repair the damage. The PAK was usually much faster at repairing him than this, which left him feeling a little worried. 

  
He tried not to dwell too much on it as he stared, narrow-eyed at the window. In a few hours he was certain he’d be fit and well again, and able to run around if he wanted without feeling a stitch of pain. But he found it very hard to remain patient, especially when he was stuck in an unfamiliar place with little to no control.

  
Dib presently returned carrying a plastic tray. On it were two steaming mugs of tea, and between the mugs was a plate piled high with ginger biscuits. He settled the tray on the coffee table after shoving back the UFO magazines to make space. That awkward and uncomfortable silence lingered between them a moment as Zim studied him, and what he’d brought as an offering. He wasn’t impressed.

  
Dib broke the ice that had formed since he’d been out of the room, as he usually often found himself doing. “Luckily Gir saved you too. If he hadn’t have called, I think you’d be pretty dead, Zim. You’d better thank him.” He said this mildly; as the human had no idea what had actually happened. And Zim wasn’t sure what to say. If it wasn’t for the robot, he wouldn’t be here, suffering these indignities. So he kept quiet. Dib waited for an answer, and looked bewildered what he didn’t get one. Zim was rarely quiet. In fact, his constant need for attention was often overwhelming. 

  
Dib got up and closed the curtains. He didn’t need anyone peering in at this late hour and seeing his alien.

  
The phone started to ring in its shrill, raucous tones. Zim jerked back up again, only to dive under his blanket like a child hiding from the bogey man.

  
“It’s okay! It’s probably just Gir checking up on you.” Dib closed his hand over the phone, picked it up and answered without further ado. “Yeah? Dib Membrane here." There was silence for a beat, and then Zim heard the soft tinkle of Dib’s patented laughter. He relaxed a little as curiosity took over. Warily he lowered his frontal-blanket-defence and peered at Dib who was busily talking on the phone. He paced about the room as he spoke. “Yeah, dad. I know. I experienced it too. No, everything’s okay. It all just turned on by itself. Didn’t even need to find my fuse box. It did scare me a little though. What? It didn’t just affect the whole city?” There was a brief pause, and he could see Dib’s eyes flickering to and fro as he listened on the other end of the line. Zim more or less sat like a rigid statue, his right antenna erect on his head like an aerial transceiver. Dib shook his head and chuckled again, and just for a moment all worry dropped from his face, making him look ten years younger. “It’s okay, dad. I’m fine. Yeah. You too. Bye now.” He hung up and looked over at his frazzled guest. “That was my dad. It’s fine. I didn’t tell him anything.”

  
“What did_ he_ want?”

  
“Oh?” He looked more distracted than normal. “Nothing. He was just telling me that America pretty much had a blackout. Apparently there was an EMP disaster at my dad’s lab. It was something experimental, or so he says, but it wasn’t shielded properly, and it downed anything electrical.”

  
Zim frowned, causing his eyes to crease up a little from his bottom lids. “EM...P?”

  
“Yeah. It stands for ‘electromagnetic pulse.’ My house went on the fritz for like, five minutes. I thought you were playing a joke on me or something.”

  
This did not sit well with Zim. If what Dib was saying was true, then his base had been equally affected by this ‘EMP.’ No wonder his base had melted into a terrible standby. Even his PAK had not been spared from the human activity. “Will it happen again, pig smelly?”

  
“No, I don’t think so. After all, it cripples us. Everything we use is pretty much electrical.” He suddenly looked at Zim in a panic, realizing he had just said too much. But Zim looked so afraid that he doubted he was thinking about global domination right now. He kind of got the gist that something like this had happened to the proud Irken as well, and that might explain his wound. After all, a nation-wide blackout didn’t happen every day, and Zim turning up with a massive hole under his ribs didn’t happen every day either. But maybe he was just clutching at straws. Maybe the two events weren’t related at all.

Why wouldn’t Zim just tell him what had happened? Unless it had something to do with a secret plot to wipe out mankind? And sadly he wasn’t that surprised. Zim always battened down on his personal life, and his problems: a conduct not that dissimilar to how human soldiers behaved.

  
“Here.” Dib picked up a mug and offered it to him. “Drink it while it’s hot. I’ve put two teaspoons of sugar in there.”

  
Zim struggled to remain sitting up, but he took the mug after giving him a meek ‘thank you.’ He cradled the drink using both his claws, and sipped tentatively at the hot liquid. It soothed his dry throat, and the incredible heat helped him feel warm and cosy. However, after each sip, his spooch gurgled in discomfort. To Dib’s untrained ear, these gurgles sounded a lot the rumblings of an upset stomach.

  
“You’re going to sleep here tonight Fudge. And first thing tomorrow morning, I promise I will drive you back home.”

  
Zim perked his smooth antenna at him like he was raising a questioning eyebrow. “I’m still trying to destroy Earth, you know. Perhaps you are more stupid than you look.”

  
“Yeah, yeah. Whatever.” He drank down his tea in mere minutes, and then grabbed a biscuit. “I’m calling it a night, Zim. It’s three in the morning. Eat the biscuits if you’re hungry. But I’m going to bed. And no funny stuff while I’m gone. I mean it.”

  
“I’m in no mood for fun.” He said, taking the phrase literally.

  
Dib just shook his head at him.

  
He left, leaving the main parlour room light on. Zim sat, nestled in his blankets, feeling his spooch twist and turn as it tried to digest the liquids he had recently taken. Straining his right antenna, he listened to Dib’s footsteps with all the paranoia of a wounded soldier alone in enemy territory. First he heard him go into the kitchen to do some clearing up, then he heard him tread his heavy way upstairs, and for awhile Zim could just about hear him open some drawers, turn the faucets on in the upstairs bathroom, and then all went quiet. Trying to overcome his crippling one-sided deafness, he listened with a chronic and intense stare, glittery eyes riveted to the ceiling in fearful anticipation. But the clock click-clacked on, his eyelids drooped, and his vigil began to melt down the middle.

  
Eventually he drooped against the pillow, antenna still on guard for noise, but despite his amplified exhaustion: much of it PAK-induced, he couldn’t sleep very well.

  
The smells he kept sniffing were nauseous. Everything stank of the Dib. And everything was dirty. There were old crumbs on the rug below, and the couch smelt distinctly of cigarette smoke. Dust clung to the coffee table, and old beer stains clung here and there on the floor beyond the rug. Humans lived like savages. They even ate like savages.

  
He did not like the silence. Occasionally a car would flash by outside, dispelling the dull calm. And the motion of the clock on the mantle was more irritation than comfort. In his base, deep in his honeycomb, the computers were always humming, and the machinery and tubing had their own music. He could listen to the harmony of his paraphernalia wherever he was, and sleep beneath the warm, hissing vents, tight and cuddled in a far corner where he knew he was safe.

  
Lying on this couch in an open parlour did not make him feel safe.

  
To further put him at paradoxical odds, he was suddenly afraid to go back home and face his little robot child.


	3. Problems Surmounting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a quickie update for MayMilk (for some reason I thought chapter 3 was already submitted? I must be going crazy XD) Anyway, this is the old version, but I still hope you enjoy!

He stood over the sink in front of the mirror, scrubbing his hands using the bathroom cloth because he had no brushes or anything that could effectively scrub out the green mess more easily.

_He’s in my house. Bleeding like a stuck-pig. He just doesn’t bleed like that. Once he receives any injury, it’s gone again in minutes. ‘I fell down some stairs,’ he says. He doesn’t even pretend to make a better story. His pride will kill him one of these days. Who’d have thought he’d be so... gaunt beneath that uniform? I’ve never seen him naked before, not completely. Due to the whole-blood episode thing I only briefly looked at what he has going on downstairs. I wrapped him to the nines in blankets, worried he would go into shock. Was he always that... thin?_

He stopped to look at himself in the mirror, noticing the strands of grey in his mop of ebony. Dib turned on the faucet and watched old green swish and glug down in a flash of hot water. He wanted to be rid of it. Not because it disgusted him, but because it left a bitter aftertaste of mortality in his mouth. Death was always there, that revolting second layer beneath life. He never really suspected that he could lose Zim just as fast as any other. His screams still filled the spaces in the darkest moments just as he shut his eyes to go to sleep, and he’d see the silver of the wire strung in dew-drops of emerald.

With a squeak of the tap he turned the faucet off, dried his hands and went into the bedroom. He closed the door and locked it from the inside by running home a single bolt.

He liked to think he knew Zim a little better, and believed he was no longer a big a threat as he used to be, but old worries and habits never changed, especially when Zim was by and large alien by nature and design. He had come to fear the Irken’s PAK more than he feared the alien who carried it. Sometimes his eyes would flash down to it, that subtle and mostly ignored metal dome. Things could spring out of it at any moment to fulfil the owner’s violent cravings. Zim’s fragility was such a loud contrast in comparison, and it helped explain why he leaned on his cybergenetic half so heavily.

He dressed down to his boxers and slipped in under the cold bedcovers, craving a cigarette even though he never smoked in the bedroom. He opened his nightstand drawer and fished around past the box of cigarettes for his gun. It was a Walter p.9, a useful handgun that he had bought when he had become of age. He had never used it, and dreaded the day when it was demanded of him to pull the trigger. Zim had provoked him since he was young and this had led him to seek the initiative, and leave little to chance. He was pretty sure Irkens were vulnerable to bullets as they were to wires.

As prepared as he was, forever trying to guess the soldier’s next steps as if they were locked in a dance, he doubted the alien would even leave the couch. The bleeding had soaked through the gauze and padding. He squeezed his eyes shut in self-loathing when he knew he should have kept the pressure on it.

_In the safety of his base – where his computer bows to his every need and want – how could he have received such an injury? Had something happened maybe, outside his military controlled vicinity, and he had walked all the way home, only to collapse on the floor where I found him? He won’t even go near the subject as if it embarrasses him. Stupid creature. Why do I help? _

He thought about slipping the gun under the pillow, and then decided to leave it on his nightstand where he could look at it, knowing it was within reach.

_I didn’t think about installing CCTV in my lounge or anywhere downstairs. I guess I’m not that prepared after all. I won’t know what he’s up to until the morning._

With his little lamp burning bright, he faced the locked door, and occasionally looked to the window across from him as the moon drifted through the silvery dark sky. Everything was too serene, too calm.

_What if he needs me? What if he keeps bleeding? He’s not as young as he used to be._

He shook his head within the moment._ No. He can handle it. He always manages. In an hour or so he’ll be up and wrecking the place. I’ll be lucky if I even still have a house by the time the sun rises._

Dib’s eyelids lowered as he maintained his vigil. He must have fallen asleep because he woke up to find the gun in his hand somehow, with the sunlight streaming in through the window. The birds were warbling out their tunes as cars rushed along the road in the foreground. Dib looked to the door. It was still locked tight with no holes in it. Leaving the bed and tucking the gun away into a drawer, he tiptoed to the door, slid the bolt aside and opened the door onto the landing.

There was no word to describe the enormous relief that blew through him. So far as he could see, the landing, bathroom and guest room were just as he had left them. He quickly changed into his spare clothes and creaked down the stairs, thinking he should have stashed the gun into the waistband of his pants.

“Zim?” He called as he went. “Don’t jump round any corners, okay? I’m coming down.” He was surprised to hear a faint reply coming from the lounge. Zim carefully sat up, one eye slanting down in a wince, his remaining antenna arched forwards to hear him better.

Blankets were huddled around him, most of which were stained in dabs of that purulent green. His eyes were sharply rimmed in exhaustion which caused his wrinkles to appear deeper. “Dib stink. Don’t go back on your promise. If you so much as...”

“I won’t.” He frowned at the new stains, but didn’t comment. He had rather hoped that if he encouraged the Irken to rest he would heal all the quicker, but the results weren’t quite what he had been expecting.

* * *

“Well, here you are.” He parked along the sidewalk and applied the handbrake. Directly beside them was the Irken’s house. It stood with its usual solemn air - the ghastly lawn gnomes staring off into space as they bordered the pristine garden path. The flamingos looked more crooked as of late, as if weather or time had softened their armature frames. Even the glowing green walls of the narrowed house looked dull, with less of that alien vibrancy Dib had got so accustomed to seeing. Or maybe it was just him. Maybe it hadn’t changed at all, and his perceptions had. Sometimes the early morning winter light paled things beyond recognition.

From the front passenger seat on a cushion to boost his height, Zim looked shyly out of the car window. He was so small that his feet dangled off the lip of the seat, and he couldn’t even look over the dashboard to view the world from the windshield. The experience with the human had been a long and tiring affair, and he’d rather not have to suffer the ignominy of him for another minute.

He looked to the human who in turn smiled back. It was a smile that was worn at the edges, but it was always genuine, which Zim found downright unnerving. Since when did the sole defender of Earth treat him with such civility? The situation had to be in Dib’s favour somehow, and he would later use whatever information he had gleaned from his moments in the base.

Somewhere along the way of growing up, Dib had eventually lost interest in Zim, and had instead gone after jobs, girlfriends, and there was a time when he was busy house-hunting. As Zim fell down the agenda list, he began to realise why. He had stopped trying to take over the Earth.

When the computer asked him for a mission report, he stood there, hunting for excuses, and it told him in banal tones that he had not reported to the Tallest in over five years, and had not made a significant advancement in his mission for a decade. Even his status report read: SUSPENDED as if the computer had somehow moderated his actions from afar and had sent the little notification to his leaders.

It had made him draw away from the console in horror as he struggled to remember what had started this stagnation, and what kind of punishment this might entail – not just for him, but for Gir. With one word the Tallest would send him back to Irk and have him stand once more before his peers on Trial to determine his existence, and then eradicate him. He remembered the way they had looked at him from the tiers.

“Aren’t you getting out, Zim?” Dib turned to him, one hand resting on the leather grip of the steering wheel. A glint of mellowed sunlight caught the left lens of his prescription glasses. Uncomfortable under his scrutiny, Zim weakly gripped the door handle and pulled.

The car door clicked and opened. The fresh winter air was a welcome. Releasing the seatbelt from his diminutive shoulder, he gingerly stepped out onto the gravel of the asphalt road, the pale cold sunlight emphasising the paleness of his countenance.

His injured side was stiff and feverish, but he was able to move around. He was back in his uniform that helped reinstate his indomitability, but the sleek fabric smelt strongly of chemical agents humans used to wash things with, but he was pleased it was blood-free. Dib had done well to get the stains out. All that remained was a raggedy hole in his side where he had been wounded where only gauze showed through the gap.

“Zim? Fudgekin?” Dib called when he still hesitated by the car. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I am perfectly fine, Earth smeet!” He rebuked with a harrowing growl. Even though Dib was a young man, Zim often demoted him with insults he used to call him when he was a boy. “But just because you sheltered me for one night does not make us friends. And thanks to you my uniform now smells of lilac and rosebuds! It’s disgusting!”

“Don’t get your dress in a twist.”

“It’s not a dress, and it’s not twisted!” And with that, he slammed the car door shut and marched around the front of the car to his garden path.

Dib shook his head and released the handbrake. “Aliens.” He muttered as he drove away from the sidewalk.

Zim stood at the purple door, watching the car drive away. He knew he really should hurry and get inside. Anybody would see his antennae and fuchsia eyes, but he didn’t move until Dib’s car had disappeared over the brow of the hill. He could hear the big-screen TV blaring out cartoons through the door. He hesitated as cool wind seemed to blow through him. Checking his rear to make sure no humans were watching, he gathered his failing courage and reached for the doorknob.

As the pale sunshine shone on his PAK, he heard the door unlock from within. He felt his nerves tighten up as he stepped back, gloved hands clenching at his sides. The door had barely creaked open when Gir had flung himself at him before he could prepare for it, and then Gir was hugging him, his cyan eyes wide. “Oh Master! I missed you so bad!”

His heart was racing. “All right! Enough! Let me inside my own house Gir, before someone sees!”

The robot barely gave him room to move, so he more or less struggled up the porch steps and through the doorway with the robot’s arms tortuously wrapped around his middle. He shut the door behind him with the aid of an elongated metal spider appendage. Safe within his private chambers, the tight cords within him refused to loosen. Gir was nuzzling him like a child nuzzling a father who had returned from a long, unplanned absence. Zim didn’t know what to do or say. Maybe Gir simply hadn’t realized what he was doing, and hadn’t understood the consequences. Gir’s brain capacity was very limited, for his thinking process was different to that of a sentient being. Perhaps now the robot understood, and would not do it again, or maybe a bit of reprogramming was all that was needed.

Zim patted him weakly on the top of his metal head. “I missed you too, Gir. Just be a little more careful next time when you urm... play. Irkens are notorious bleeders. Say. How about I make you some waffles?”

“Waffles!” And Gir hugged him even more tightly before letting go to dance merrily about the room like some excited toddler. Zim watched him, a little relieved, but he did not discard his stiff posture as if he still expected a disarmed bomb to blow. There was nothing to suggest that anything was wayward with the robot. Gir was like his old self, except, there was something different.

Keeping four steps away from Gir at all times unless the robot crossed the boundary himself, he noticed that there was a digit missing. “Where on Irk is the rest of your hand?”

Gir stopped dancing a moment and looked down at his left hand as if he had only just realized that part of him was missing. His little thumb was gone. Gir guiltily peered up at his master and did a little shrug. “I dunno.”

Zim rolled his eyes. Every time Gir went to approach him, he automatically backpedalled to maintain a safe distance. “I don’t have spare S.I.R unit appendages on standby, you know. Ah well. It’s the least of my problems anyway. I’ll have to find you a new... eh... thumb later.” He strolled into the kitchen, hands behind his back as he began to unwind, the TV blaring away behind him.

“Was you at a party?” Gir asked. After his little giddy spell of dancing he returned to his Master’s side as Zim turned to the cooker. He grabbed a pan and poured waffle mixture onto its surface. He didn’t bother to put an apron on. His uniform was already ruined besides, and he’d need to pick out a new one later.

“No, Gir. I was at that Dib’s place. Usually I’d yell at you for allowing that pig monkey anywhere near our home, but I suppose you did sort of save my life. Just don’t do that again. I can’t trust him. For all I know, he’s stolen something, or implanted a spy camera somewhere!”

“Ooh. You’re sad.” The robot exclaimed.

“No, Gir. I’m just... glad you’re okay.” He turned up the heat on the stove and the pancake mixture started to sizzle.

“You’re making pancakes.” Gir pointed out. Zim grumbled. He had trouble telling the difference between waffle and pancake mix. “Oh well. Just eat it. I have work to do.”

“Aww.” The robot whinnied. “But you always work. You should dance! Like McDuck!” Zim muttered some incomprehensible response in Irken. He added butter to the mixture, something he did very carefully, lest it splash and burn his skin. He flipped it over once with the spachelor and turned down the heat. He wasn’t quite sure why he was doing this. Really it should have been the other way round, with Gir catering to his needs as a way of an apology. He supposed that keeping busy, and doing things helped keep his mind diverted from his anxieties.

He neatly removed the pancake from the frying pan and coasted it into an awaiting plate where he then drizzled it in maple syrup and sugar, both of which he enjoyed himself. Then he passed it to Gir who was sporting a big grin on his metallic face. “There. Now leave me in peace for an hour! And keep the TV volume down this time! I can’t afford to have neighbours complaining of the racket you make!”

Gir guffawed as he literally drank down the pancake. Maple syrup splashed all up the robot’s face. Zim grimaced in disgust. He made it to the toilet with a slight stagger and sunk down into the depths.

The conduit took him deeper and deeper until comfortable warmth from the temperatures below filled him with sleepy serenity. This was his place, his domain. Nothing else on Earth, or perhaps even in the known universe made him feel safer. Here, he was cocooned by his aegis of technology. It was his helm of control, his haven, his armour. Out there, among humans, even among the stars, he did not feel as safe, or as welcomed as he did here.

He stepped out of the conduit to one of his lowest floors and started marching in a stiff-sided walk to the main computer console. He soon came across a dark, dry puddle of green blood. He stopped on the instant, a clawed hand rushing to his lips. This was where Dib had come down to find him before hauling him back to the surface. “Computer!” He yelled.

“Yes?” The computer replied. Its voice boomed through the warm confines from seemingly everywhere at once.

“Playback the last eleven hours! Did that human weasel filch anything from my database, or the base itself?”

A large pink monitor wormed its way out of a wall of tubing and the screen showed him surveillance footage from precisely eleven hours ago. On the bottom right was the allotted time and day. The camera had a perfect view of the tunnel leading down from the main entrance, and on the floor, sodden with blood was Zim himself many hours before.

The Irken tried to view his own self with cold indifference. He knew what had happened to him, and didn’t really care for a reminder. In the footage, Gir was kneeling by his side, trying to rouse him by shaking his body and pleading with him. Blood was all over his little metallic hands, and his pleading made it look as though he had no connection or even any awareness of what had just happened.

“Computer! Fast-forward! Take me to the moment when that weasel shows up!” Soon he could hear the background elevator whirring away, and as the time ticked down on the recording, Dib presently arrived on the scene carrying a backpack. He was wearing his customary trench coat and those goofy glasses of his. He stood for a few moments, warily eyeing the base with recognizable fear and apprehension. He had likely arrived not long after this supposed ‘phone call’ that Gir had made. He had done it before on occasion, but how he had learnt and remembered Dib’s home number was the true mystery.

He watched the human approach his comatose self, and shadow Gir’s posture by kneeling down beside him. “Zim?” He was whispering in the recording. There was no sign of him having any more interest in the place than was necessary, which Zim found strange. He was in an alien base! Grossly unsupervised! He could steal what he wanted, take what he pleased! Walk where he wanted! And vandalise the place, take pictures with that infuriating camera of his!

He growled in irritation when his left antenna could not pick up the audio. “Computer! Turn the volume up!”

“Yes, Master.”

“Zim? Zim!” He watched the human in the recording eye up the blood before dipping his fingers into the rapidly cooling pool of green goo.

_Yes, it’s blood, Dib. Get on with it!_

“Jesus! What the hell happened?”

“He won’t get up!” Gir was lamenting. “I think he ate too much apple juice! Can you maybe stitch him back up before he loses anymore?” There was some static zipping across the screen, and Zim ignored it. Now would be the perfect time for Dib to sneak in a picture or two, or take a souvenir, but he was surprised yet again when the human did no such thing. He watched him wrap up his unconscious self in his trench coat and then the man promptly asked the computer for a quick route back up top, which the computer did with infuriating ease, accepting this whole debacle/kidnap without resistance.

He watched the human disappear from the angle of the camera before the footage faded to black. “End of recording.” Droned the computer.

Zim ran a careful hand down his crooked antenna, causing him to flinch. He grumbled again. The bottom-line of their relationship hadn’t changed. They were still at war, the truce was just a line drawn in sand. “There must be some mistake.”

There had been something in Dib’s eyes last night while he had lain, impotent on the couch, as if he knew something. He had been acting strange for months, as if he was... sad, like he had lost something, and couldn’t get it back.

Human emotions were beyond him, and remained an uncomfortable enigma. He was still learning their behaviour after all this time for survival’s sake, and when he finally thought he had cracked it, they surprised him again, forcing him to start from scratch. “Computer!” The underlining strength in his shout was returning.

“Yes, Master?”

“I demand to know why you let the enemy remove me from my base!”

“Intervention was required. I determined that Dib Membrane was of no threat.”

“You determined? You’re a computer! You calculate! You obey! You do not determine anything!”

“I apologize Master. Your vitals were becoming critical and he provided...”

“Never do that again! I will raise the security if I must! Protocols must never be breached!”

“Master...”

“Silence!” He went to kick at a loose bit of tubing imbedded in the wall and when his boot connected with the metal cylinder he felt something split in his side. “Ywouch!” He hobbled backwards, slapping both hands to his bandaged side. “Damn this PAK!” He cringed, coughing. “Why hasn’t it healed me yet? This kind of injury should take a day to heal completely! Oh Irk!” He limped over to the console and started running his claws over its translucent keys.

Had the PAK run dry of painkilling analgesics already? It felt like it had never had them to begin with.

“Computer. Run an efficiency test on my PAK. What is its functioning capability?”

A portable apparatus descended from the ceiling and a beam of light erupted from its moveable dome-like head. The beam pinpointed into a concentrated red line from a slit in the dome, and then the line expanded until it became a curtain of pink light. This light descended over Zim’s PAK like a soundless waterfall as it scanned the exterior and interior of the artificial organ. The process only took mere moments. Soon the portable dome had packed itself away and the computer was digesting the data.

Zim presently waited with about as much patience as he could manage. Finally the computer replied with a visual display of numbers running down the giant main console screen. These numbers were often accompanied by red Irken symbols. Zim tried to read through the data analytically, setting his feelings aside into a sealed, cold vacuum. He was glad that he had been trained like he had, or he may have broken down on the spot.

He scrolled through the results, his claws tapping on the keys occasionally like he was playing the piano. In an ironic way he had been expecting these results. They matched what he had slowly started to suspect. “I strongly advise contacting the Tallest.” The computer recommended in its intoned indifference. 

He stared at the descending symbols, barely reacting. He had grown more solemn as the years passed him by; with defeats and failures mounting until they were pouring over the walls he had built. Like a summer greenhorn he had come to Earth with so many ideas that his head had almost burst with them. His youth and cybernetic prowess had driven him carelessly through defeats or victories with the iron fervour that had driven him through warzones, battles and strife. Irkens moved forwards like a relentless battle train.

But that summer had come and gone. A certain cold had crept in, and there was a winter ache in his heart and in his bones. He found himself shivering when the temperature was at nominal levels, and he was constantly trying to rub or scratch away a stubborn ache from his knees and hips.

Turning to the console, he disconnected himself carefully from his PAK, which was a risky thing to do when he was still healing. With the PAK neatly landing on the console before him, he straight away opened it up using a dismantling tool. The protective outer mantle parted, revealing delicate circuitry. The high-tech instruments that served as a brain that kept his organs running at optimum efficiency were now out of date. Every warrior Irken, or even a simple engineer, knew their time would come one day, and usually a war-bred Irken hoped to meet his end in battle where he could make his race proud.

But sometimes an Irken lived far longer than expected despite the high-stresses of military life, and soon came the day when they were evaluated to have their PAKs possibly replaced, and upgraded so that they could serve their military term for another hundred years or so. If they were deemed unfit however, their PAKs were cast aside, leaving the Irken to die miserably before a crowd of onlookers, should he live long enough to fail.

Nervous whenever he detached himself from his life-support, Zim looked through the wiring and glowing nodules, finding that some of it was starting to fray. A few nodules had a covering of dirt on them, or deposits of a calcified substance. Parts that made up his life-support could not be replaced by any rogue Irken. The Tallest were wise to pick and choose the elites they wanted to keep for the future of the Empire, and the riff-raff were left to wither away. Only Technicians knew how to safely restore mechanical cybernetics, and their expertise was sacred in its secrets. Common drones were not trained on how to modify or attempt deep PAK repair. Sometimes Irkens did try, only to fail and end up dying from their botched attempts.

None had ever succeeded. Only Irkens with high rankings and certain promotions were allowed PAK upgrades to ensure that their encoded memory and expertise survived into another generation. The Empire was very selective, only keeping and replenishing the toughest of the toughest. If nothing changed, he was sentenced to die a natural death.

This was how the Tallest lived for so long, their body chemistry never aging. Since they were Irken leaders, they were basically immortal, their PAKs automatically upgraded every dozen years or so.

He tried to clean out some dust that had settled around the little nodules and synthetic arteries, being careful not to nudge anything out of place, but there was little else he could do, and there was certainly nothing he could do about the corrosion, or the settling of sediments that looked like an accretion of calcified deposits. He’d have to drill some of it away, but with his life clock so short, and him so nervous and shaky, he wasn’t sure he was ready to face the task.

Recovering the sides of the mantle over his PAK and sealing it closed, he stood patiently while it redelivered itself back into the slots of his spine. The connection was briefly uncomfortable as an electrical discharge burned down his system. Once it had passed, he straightened, breathing deeply only to then splutter with coughs. A call to the Tallest was essential, but if he asked for his PAK to be officially repaired and refurbished, he would have to leave Earth to be evaluated. His hand was hurting. He stopped and looked at it, uncurling the fingers from the palm he had been squeezing. There were rips in the material of his glove.

“Computer. What is Gir up to?” Another monitor squeezed through a miasma of tubing to present itself, and on the screen was a LIVE feed of Gir bouncing and flailing on the couch. On the TV was a Pokémon commercial. Gir was being his usual, stupid self. Zim sighed and pushed the monitor away.

In response the screen folded up and disappeared back into the confines of the wall. He brushed down his uniform to disperse it of wrinkles, and he tried to cover some of the loose material over the ugly greenish gauze showing through the hole. And though he tried to flatten his crooked antenna as much as it made him wince, it always sprung back up again as bent as before, its shredded parts mostly anaesthetized from its grisly amputation. He then poked and jabbed at his wrinkles under his eyes, positive the skin had widened into deeper crevices since last he’d looked.

Though he tried to make himself presentable, he still looked a mess. He clenched his fists, the claws digging into his palms, the gloves squeaking from the pressure. “Computer.” He said soberly. “Contact the Tallest and uplink their feed onto the main view screen.”


	4. Hanging on a Promise

The main view screen filled with static as his computer located their signal. If the Massive was on the dark side of a planet, it was sometimes impossible to contact them until their satellites were in better range, with less radioactive planetary interference. Sometimes the signal did not get through at all.

  
He did not need to worry this time. The signal connected successfully and he was looking in on the royal chamber where the Tallest habitually liked to sit or stand whilst receiving messages, drafting Irkens to war or eating snacks. Huge red tapestries hung at the back of each chair, the black Irken symbol a stern reminder of who he would always be. Today, no one was sitting on the high chairs.

  
“My Tallest?” He called, “Hello? It’s Zim! I need to make a tiny, little, ever so small request!”

  
One of them looked at him from the side of the screen. It was Tallest Red. Zim recognised pale surprise in his leader’s narrowed, long face before a careful stoniness washed over it. “Oh. You. I had just about forgotten what you looked like. Now you’ve reminded me. Great.” 

  
Zim was never very good at decoding their sarcasm, and began to suspect that it wasn’t sarcasm at all. “My Tallest! Greetings!” He saluted at once. “I have a request!”

  
“Wait, wait.” Tallest Red looked off-screen to make a ‘come here’ gesture. “Purple, Purple! Come look at this!”

  
Zim waited, standing as straight and as tall as he could. Purple soon joined Red before he began to laugh. Zim smiled too, trying to get in on the joke even when he had no idea what it was.

  
“Are you pregnant, Zim?” Red blurted out. “Don’t you realize that it’s against all of Irken Law to create smeets without authorization?”

  
“Let’s be done with it and just execute him anyway!” Purple said.

  
“Like that ever works!”

  
“No, no my dear Tallest!” Zim hurried to say, even though he was unsure what ‘pregnant’ meant, “I suffered a minor incident, as is common on the battlefield. My spooch is just a bit... swollen! I am not pregnant!”

  
“Oh. He’s not pregnant. Can we execute him anyway?” Purple asked.

  
Red pushed him out the way. “Back to business. What do you need? A noose? A pinch of shmoop to swallow? A grenade? A vacuum-less void to fall into?”

  
“I would like an upgrade!”

  
“An upgrade? To what? Your brain?”

  
“Almost! It’s my PAK! It’s running a bit low on power and its getting rather... worn inside. I thought...”

  
Red’s face grew dark, and his long antennae arched upwards. “You're asking us to grant you access for PAK repair?”

  
“Yes, my dear Tallest! Then I can continue the annihilation of planet Earth!”

  
“It’s been twenty two years, Zim.” Tallest Purple cut in. “And you haven’t conquered anything.”

  
“Oh, but I’m so close! I can feel it! Please! One more push and the Earth is yours! I’ll even throw in the moon! It’s kinda useless, and I did promise it to Gir, but you can use it as target practise!”

  
Red looked at Purple, and Purple looked at Red. Then they burst out laughing. “The... the defect wants his PAK repaired!”

“To prolong our torment!” 

“And... and he looks so... so pregnant!” Red laughed, holding his sides.

  
“I’m gonna die from laughter this time for sure!”

  
The transmission cut off suddenly and Zim jumped towards the screen. “My Tallest? Hello? You’ve been cut off!” He faced the ceiling. “Computer! Re-establish link!”

  
“Link up-load failure. They have ended the link, Master.”

  
Like he often did after a call to the Tallest had reached its conclusion, he stood, wilting beneath the huge black screen in the half hope that they’d realize their mistake and reconnect the link. 

  
He rested shaky claws on the console of the computer to steady himself. 

* * *

Dib sat at the desk with his headphones hanging around his neck as he typed up yesterday’s morning report that would later be issued in the Franklin newspaper. The day hadn’t been very busy, in fact very little of anything was happening. The tedium would stretch while he eagerly awaited the call from his boss that would send him out onto the field for real investigation work. For now he was deep in dull legislation.

Around him were other paranormal investigators working in different fields. Gary, who was a close colleague, worked in the same field, specializing in ghosts and extraterrestrials. He wasn’t as sharp-eyed or as level-headed as Dib, and got excited over any possible sighting or evidence, claiming it to be real without further scrutiny. The man, though much older, with wavy grey and black hair, came to work usually stinking of alcohol.

  
When Dib looked at Gary he saw too much of himself in him, and what his potential future would have looked like, and what might still look like. Growing up old, alone and obsessed was becoming ever more real by the day.

  
He went back to staring at the computer, his hands frozen over the keyboard as he struggled to think what his next words should be. He liked to think he was top of his field, and an expert on every corner of the paranormal, but he could only be assigned to two things, his study being that of aliens and ghosts, like Gary’s chosen themes: which happened to be the two most popular subjects. Any sightings related to these two topics kept him out of the office and enabled him to travel. Whereas some investigators studying vampires or swamp moles rarely left their post at all unless they got a call about some drunken guy who had thought he had seen some man suck on another man’s neck.

Aliens and ghosts were taken much more seriously, even though most of them turned out to be hoaxes. Usually ghosts or demons turned out to be rats in attic, or an alien in a cornfield turned out to be some unusually tall and satanic looking goat. 

  
His boss, Clifford, looked in at Dib from his office. “Dib. Line 2. Take the call.”

  
“Sure.” He shrugged off his headphones and picked up one of the phones by his computer, holding it to his ear. As he waited for the call to be patched through, his tired eyes overviewed his desk. It wasn’t very clean. There were coffee stains on the surface, and his ashtray needed emptying. There was a picture frame of his father and sister taken in the moment of summer five years ago. Next to it was a tiny toy figure of Zim that he had made out of bits of old plastic and glue. The likeness was very uncanny.

  
“Hello? Is this the ‘extraterrestrial sighting’ department?” Shouted some hysterical woman down the line. He was used to the hysterical sort. They liked to make a bit of a show for the attention. It was the calmer ones that usually had something genuine. 

  
“Yes, it is ma’am.” His professionalism took over in a heartbeat. He picked up the Zim figurine in one hand and felt the contours of its head. “This is Dib Membrane. What did you see exactly? And where and when did it happen?” With due care he placed the figurine back on the desk so that he had a free hand to flip open his notepad and start scribbling down notes.

  
“It’s Mrs. Hoffman to you.” Came the rattled reply. He had a mental image of her already. “And yes I saw an alien! Don’t question me because it was! I know what I saw, and I wasn’t on any drugs! I swear on Almighty God of what I saw!”

  
“When did this event occur?”

  
“Event? Don’t call it that! This was a real alien! I saw it two days ago! I tried to call your department but no one would answer!”

  
“Ah yeah. We’re shut on weekends. Lack of staff.”

  
“And you call yourselves investigators? Look, I know what I saw! It was big and terrifying!”

  
Dib sighed inwardly. Most people who thought they saw aliens usually mistook flashing streetlights in a thick fog for landing UFOs, and little misshapen dogs for Martians. “Uh huh. And what did you see exactly Mrs. Hoffman?”

  
When he had the details, he ended the call, grabbed his notebook and left the desk in a hurry, causing the little Irken figurine to fall from the desk and break apart on the floor.

* * *

The local woods belonged to a local national park where people came to tour the wilderness outside the city. It used to be Native American territory. Now it belonged to red woods, squirrels and apparently aliens.

  
Dib arrived on the site with his newly appointed assistant: a female he had never worked with before. He didn’t like bringing newbies along with him without the proper training because they only slowed him down and possessed that novel awkwardness he didn’t know how to respond to. Thankfully Gary had come with him wearing his ridiculous 60’s or 70’s dark frockcoat and fedora, and due to his confidence and nigh unshakable charisma that came from his alcoholic daze, he usually did the interviews. Mrs. Hoffman was there in her equally ridiculous salmon pink petticoat, pointing at the woodland and shouting hysterically so that half the state could hear her; repeating the same story to any who would listen.

  
“It was in there! Just to the left of that old river! It had some sort of equipment! I’m pretty sure it was equipment! It was pulsing!”

  
Dib nodded and decided to look himself just to get away from her yelling. In his backpack was his camera, torch, notepad, sensor array and DNA sampler. He preferred to work alone when he was up close and personal with ‘evidence,’ and left the new girl with Gary.

  
The woods were dark, even this early in the morning. The canopy of leaves above threw out long, ever-shifting shadows across the carpet of grass, producing a sense of mystery and menace. He was told that wolves lived here, though their sightings were chalked up as hoaxes.

  
The river was really just a small trickling stream that cut through the wood like an artery. There were signs of recent activity here, he had to admit. There were blackened scorch marks running up a tree. Two day’s old, maybe? And some of the grass had been flattened, as if something large had come along and sat on it for awhile.  
He mused to himself, thinking that Mrs. Hoffman may not have been lying after all.

  
Dib naturally didn’t want to get excited. Perhaps a human had left their car here with some camping gear perhaps (which would have been illegal), or maybe it had been kids playing a prank. Wouldn’t it be funny if Mrs. Hoffman had actually sighted real aliens? More aliens meant more Irkens and he didn’t know if he should be happy or scared at the prospect. He had once believed that Zim had been fully capable of calling for backup.

  
He started to consider that he might be dealing with aliens after all when he saw the too-obvious boot prints in the mud nearest the river where the grass had begun to thin out. And the boot marks were very small, and narrowed at the boot-tips. He clumsily fetched out his torch and its cone of light cut through the shadows, paving the way ahead.

As he searched the immediate area, he found broken branches and one small misshapen machine part. It was Irken in nature: its design familiar and he soon recognised it as a part of the Voot Runner. Dib cut his teeth into his lower lip, eyes squinting behind his glasses as his flashlight combed the grass, soil and pink telltale plasma puddles that were dappled here and there in the mud. It almost looked like someone had spilled a bottle of Cherry-aid. The Voot had landed here, and Zim and Gir must have had a fucking picnic in the goddamn open.

  
Sprinting, he broke free from the woods and rushed back to the troop and straight for Gary who was busy recording the interview with Mrs. Hoffman using his pro-go camera. He almost barrelled into them, stopping just in time before he smashed into the new girl. He couldn’t even remember her name. 

  
“So sorry, Gary.” Dib said, out of breath. He blamed his lack of stamina on the cigarettes. “But there are half price donuts right now at Marmalade’s.”

  
Marmalade’s was an exquisite shop that sold the best donuts in the world.

  
“You’re serious?” Gary looked at him with such scepticism that Dib thought his ruse was blown. “They never sell their donuts at half the price! I’d better hurry before they sell out! You don’t mind finishing up the interview do you?”

  
“Not at all. I just need what you’ve recorded so far.”

  
“Okay. Just don’t tape over anything.” And Gary gave him the pro-go camera; microphone and bulky tape recorder that looked like it had come from the same era as Gary. Then he started heading across the meadow towards the car, leaving Dib with Mrs. Hoffman and the girl.

  
Before he had even got the equipment ready, Mrs. Hoffman was off on another tirade. “Oh it was horrible! Just horrible! I only came out this way because I heard noises! Really loud banging noises! And I thought to myself that I’ll just check it out, because it was making my poor dog Missy bark and bark! I was thinking it was those crazy kids playing around ‘en such. That’s when I saw it! Stalking about in them trees!” Dib pretended to record her by resting the bulky camera on his arm and looking through the lens when in fact he had just erased all of Gary’s previous work. 

  
“Uh huh.” He encouraged, wondering how much she had actually seen.

  
“It had fiery red eyes that glowed in the dark! Satan’s eyes! And its skin was green I think! And it looked vicious! It had a gun!”

  
“A gun?”

  
She seemed pretty shook up, and Dib suspected that she was exaggerating a little.

  
I’m saving him twice in two days. I must be insane. “Okay Mrs. Hoffman. Did you get a picture of this creature?”

  
“No I didn’t.”

  
“Well, I hate to tell you this, but what you saw on Saturday night was just a kid in a costume.”

  
“What?” She looked truly baffled. 

  
“Yeah. A little kid. He got lost in the woods after he pranked everyone with a toy gun. He thought it was Halloween.”

  
“But it’s February.” She said.

  
“Exactly.”

  
“And those scary, evil eyes he had?”

  
“Make up.” Dib pressed, thinking up last-second excuses. He felt the girl looking at him peculiarly, but he took no notice of her.

  
The worry began to lift from Mrs. Hoffman’s face as if she had just escaped from a bear trap. “Really? All I saw was just a child in a costume? But... it just can’t be! There was a little green dog with it, and...”

  
“That was a kid in a costume too.”

  
“Oh.” She blinked, not sure how to continue as she looked into the camera. “All this time I thought we were being invaded by little aliens of all things!”

  
_ We were invaded two decades ago, but sure, whatever._

  
He remained affable with Mrs. Hoffman and offered to take her back to the office for some coffee, which she declined, saying that she wanted the Halloween kid apprehended for causing indecent public behaviour. He pretended to write more notes down just to keep her happy, while inside he was positively fuming, his quiet rage getting harder to conceal the more Mrs. Hoffman went on.

  
It was ironic that he was now trying to defend the stupid alien after suffering such ridicule as a child in school and then college. Now the tables were turning and it felt like a joke was being played on him.

  
Zim remained ignorant to it all. That had never changed.

  
Mrs. Hoffman, looking relieved, got in her car to drive home. Dib turned the video camera off and was about to head on over to his own car when the new girl rose a hand out to him. He stared at it as if her hand was a keen, double-edged knife.

  
“So you’re Dilbert, right?”

  
“Uh, no, it’s just plain ol’ Dib. Dib Membrane.” He said uncomfortably, but he took her hand in his and shook it. Her hand was very soft, whereas his was rough; the fingers calloused from the long nights he had spent as a kid engineering some machine to keep a space monster off his back.

  
He was not fond of females. They intimidated him. It did not help that his sister was the only female he had experiences with, and when the other kids dated, had wild campus sex, did drugs, and dated some more, he was always outside the circle, never having a girl even look his way. 

  
Their hands parted.

  
“I’m Clara. So you’re the famous son of Professor Membrane?” She sounded nervous too, as if she was conversing with a renowned celebrity. 

  
Dib tried to smile and felt his armpits moisten with sweat. “I wouldn’t get too excited. My dad and I are very different. He’s into science and well, I’m here, trying to catch ghosts on camera and chasing aliens through national parks. What about you? You’re new to this outfit, aren’t you?”

  
He had barely so much as looked at her since arriving at the park, not just because she was new, but because she was a girl. He didn’t want to like her. Liking her would mean nothing but disappointment in some way or other. She probably had a boyfriend, and had kids. And even if she happened to be single, there was no way she’d fancy him. He was a scrawny dork who wore glasses and smoked. No one wore glasses anymore. They were seen as old-fashioned. Most people used eye contacts instead, or opted for the eye-laser surgery treatment. She was just talking to him because of his surname, of which he could never escape.

  
“I started last week. I’ve been watching training videos and reading up on evidence and historical documentation before they even let me anywhere near the public.” There was a reason for such intense training. Dealing with ‘ghosties,’ general hauntings, and ghoulies was one thing, but dealing with the public was a challenge in of itself, and a lot of the job forced you into old, dilapidated buildings were health and safety was a major factor.

  
“So why did you join the investigation team, if you don’t mind me asking?” They started walking back to his car, a car whose seats were still slightly green and damp with alien blood. She had not brought her own transport: Gary had brought her over, and now Gary was gone; seeking donuts that were not half price. 

  
“I really want to get into the field of zoology and eventually cryptozoology, but in order to be certified I have to be a paranormal investigator for a year before I can actually qualify.”

  
“Zoology, huh? You like animals?”

  
“All types really. The weirder, the better. So, what are your hobbies?”

  
Chasing little green aliens. He thought. “I watch TV.” He lied, trying to appear normal, but instead it came off sounding incredibly boring. “You?”

  
“Oh, I like dancing, music, and sewing.”

  
If there was a guide book on How-To-Talk-To-girls, he would be flicking through it right now in a hurry. “I also like... games.”

  
“Video games?”

  
“Yeah. I mainly play them with Zim...” His insides dropped at the realization of his mistake. “Uh... oh I mean... myself!”

  
“Zim?” She asked, looking at him in a half amused, half curious kind of way. Females and their expressions were suddenly as alien to him as Irken expressions.

  
“Yeah, he’s... this... friend. Sorta. He’s a little green and insane.”

  
They got to his car. The green stains looked particularly bad under the full light of the morning sun. There was no way she would not see them unless she got in the back.

  
_ Great. First chance I get chatting to a girl and Zim fucks it up for me somehow without him even being here!_

  
“Urm, seats are still a bit wet at the front. Had them cleaned recently because... because I spilled lots of diet poop all over them. Mind scooting to the back?” He asked, hoping he could persuade her.

  
“I don’t mind.”

  
He drove her back to the office where he was expected to report in. He dropped Clara off and waved her goodbye, and as he watched her make her way back to the office department, he wished he was someone else, someone with the confidence to ask girls out, to step out of line once or twice, and to not give a flying fudge about Irken invaders.

* * *

Dib practically had the door exploding inwards after giving it one big kick. Gir was on the couch, eyes wide when he saw the human storm into the lounge. The robot threw his arms up and whooped eagerly. “You wanna sit next to me and have some ham? I have plenty of ham! I saved some under the sofa!”

  
Dib closed the door behind him with a smack and looked wildly around, hoping all the commotion would have summoned the alien invader straight away. “Where is he?”  
He noticed that Gir had part of his hand missing. It made the robot look odder than usual. Then again, Gir was known to lose things.

  
The human heard the toilet conduit before Gir had time to reply. Zim stepped out of the toilet with surprising dignity and walked over with a hard stare, but it was difficult to see the alien as anything but intimidating when he was limping. “Oh! What is it this time?” The Irken challenged in a groggy voice. “Can’t you see I’m busy? And look, you’re trudging mud everywhere! I can’t keep having you come here, trailing...”

  
“What do you think you’re doing?” His loud, commanding voice had quite the effect.

  
He noticed Zim’s posture completely change. His smooth antenna flattened right down, and he almost shied back as if Dib was growing taller before him. The shift in his attitude did not last, and the soldier was back to holding his ground, his shoulders tightening as if he was readying himself for battle. “D-Doing what? How... how dare you come in here and accuse Zim of...”

  
“You were in the woods weren’t you on Saturday night? Waterfall National Park ring any bells? And you went out without your disguise, again, didn’t you?”

  
“I... I was...” 

  
“You idiot!” He pressed forwards, flapping his arms out, which only made the Irken instantly recoil and shrink away. “They’re going to find you, they’re going to capture you, and they’re going to kill you, Zim! Don’t you care? Shouldn’t you be just a little bit more vigilant?”

  
The old Elite almost tripped over a doll, his eyes glued on the advancing human. “You – you don’t tell ZIM what to do, you fucking little worm! I can do as I please! You forget your place!” He ended up fastened into a corner while the human towered over him.

  
“And what place is that, Zim? Tell me! Is that where I stand, watching you get dissected? Is my place watching you scream and cry while they hack your arm off? Because this is the reality! I won’t be able to save you when they come for you!”

  
“Why... why do you s-say that like you’re not one of them?” 

  
Dib caught himself. Then he blew his top. “You’re right! What the hell am I thinking? You’re a fucking alien, spreading mayhem and carnage! I should have exposed you while I was still in school!” He spun round, his trench coat flying at the edges. 

  
“Dib!”

  
He didn’t stop and approached the door in that same building momentum. He opened it with a violent jerk of his hand.

  
“Dib stop!”

  
He stepped out onto the sunlit porch. The birds were singing but he didn’t hear them.

  
“You don’t turn your back on me, Dib worm! You promised me you wouldn’t!”

  
His forward march met an invisible wall, and he stood trembling on the alien’s front porch steps. Hot breath stormed out of his partly opened lips. Without even looking at him, his eyes locked on his car ahead, he answered coldly; “You’re an alien. And you still believe in that promise?”

  
“I know you still do. You are indebted to me.”

  
Even though Zim could not see it, he winced. “I haven’t forgotten.” He finally looked round at him, his glasses flashing in the sun when he saw that the Irken had peeled himself out of the corner and was standing within the shadows of the lounge. “It was an accident. You can’t hold it against me your whole life.”

  
“Was it an accident?”

  
Dib stormed down the garden path to his car. “Tonight then, at the Treaty.” He yelled as he opened the door. “And don’t be late!”


End file.
